Sensory announces privacy-focused voice biometric assistant

Sensory has announced the development of a new, privacy-focused voice biometric assistant, running completely on device to avoid concerns around cloud data storage and processing.

The solution’s first deployment can be seen in the Farberware FM11VABK microwave oven, which can be controlled via Sensory’s voice biometrics. The device integrates both Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree and TrulyNatural technologies to deliver a user-friendly experience that the company says is inherently privacy-protecting.

Sensory’s voice biometric platform keeps all voice data locally, with no data collection from the product and no recordings sent to the cloud.

“We’re at a turning point with voice UI technology,” explained Sensory CEO, Todd Mozer. “People love the convenience of mainstream voice assistants, but privacy, accuracy, complicated setup, and connectivity issues continue to be a growing concern among users. These concerns have intensified the need for custom private voice assistants.”

Consequently, the FM11VABK microwave does not require Wi-FI capabilities. It needs only a connection to the power outlet and its voice recognition software will allow touchless user control capabilities.

These include commands such as ‘open door,’ ‘cook popcorn,’ ‘set a timer to one minute 27 seconds,’ and more. Complex instructions like ‘cook four baked potatoes’ are also supported through Sensory’s large-vocabulary recognizer with a custom statistical language model and natural language understanding (NLU) capability which attempts to identify the user’s intent within a limited domain.

This delivers a significantly lower chance of being misunderstood, compared to off-the-shelf voice assistants, Sensory says, citing benchmarking by the company’s testing division, Vocalize.ai, which shows the Farberware microwave accurately recognized and performed 68 percent more spoken commands with Sensory technology than the Amazon Basics Microwave with Alexa. The results also demonstrate the potential for edge computing, the company says.

“Sensory’s customer base used to be driven by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung that licensed Sensory technology to improve their general assistant offerings,” Mozer continued. “Today we’re seeing a major shift, with most of our customers being brands that want to own and manage their own private custom voice assistant platforms.”

While Amazon and Sensory have both announced custom voice assistants, Sensory’s on-device storage and processing is among its major differentiating factors.

Sensory has been quite active in the first half of 2021. In January the firm launched its voice user interface (VUI) creation platform VoiceHub. More recently, digital music service Spotify, which is a client of Sensory, announced it was testing the firm’s voice biometric technology for a voice-controlled audio entertainment device for private vehicles.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  biometrics at the edge  |  data protection  |  data storage  |  edge computing  |  privacy  |  Sensory  |  voice biometrics  |  voice recognition